


April Shower

by wonderwanda



Category: Rizzoli & Isles
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:13:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7214656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderwanda/pseuds/wonderwanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Losing you is easy because you're beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	April Shower

**Author's Note:**

> I hated the way they handled the end of the baby storyline. A lot.
> 
> The work title and section titles are from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD7Y5yWjlos) by De-Phazz.

_i. never thought i'd feel so happy_  


The first loss She hadn’t considered a loss at all. It was a mutual parting. A previously agreed upon severing of phantom limbs. Though, they’d again reached a point where they felt almost like a single organism, not stitched and ripped and restitched fragments of each other.  
This time everything felt so final.  
  
Until it wasn’t.  
   
Her legs were wrapped around him, but She was distracted. She couldn’t stop thinking about Maura rambling on over the Kama Sutra.  
   
_“I’ve read that certain position sequences can keep women on the verge of climax for hours. Of course, every woman is different—it would depend on the sensitivity of her clitoris….”_  
  
_“Maura!”_  
   
Her orgasm snuck up on Her that night. They’d both decided this was their parting shot, and descended into one another accordingly.  
   
She sighed as Her insides rippled in the aftermath.  
   
“This sucks.”  
   
He agreed, and they settled into a comfortable sleep.  
   
A few weeks later the wound of absence had made a home inside of Her, and he decided to love it anyway.  
 

_ii. (baby)_  


She didn’t like talking about it, but She liked talking to it. When She was home alone, She’d make plans, consulting Her abdomen for advice on what they should do together.  
   
“I’m going to think of a name for you. It’s not going to be terrible, either. I went to elementary school with a girl named Candy Cane. I promise I won’t name you Candy Cane. That would be really shitty.”    
   
She took the fancy blender out of the cupboard. It was a present from Maura, another thing She didn’t really need—except for right then when fighting the desire for a chocolate milkshake would have been extremely futile.    
   
She sat down with three things: Her milkshake, a curly straw, and a legal pad. Then She made three columns: BOY, Girl, and ???. She scribbled a baseball next to BOY, a heart and a flower next to Girl, and a baseball jersey with hearts and flowers on it next to ???.  
   
_“I could always name you milkshake.”_ She mused while watching the ice cream swirl its way through the straw.  
   
She illegibly scrawled her colleagues names in each column, putting the pen in her mouth with contemplation. She was about to cross everyone’s name off, but instead drew a line underneath and wrote MIDDLE before underlining it three times.  
   
It occurred to her then, that she hadn’t thought about her case for at least half an hour. Maybe forty five minutes if one counted the time it took her to blend her milkshake. This was a new record. She couldn’t decide if she was impressed or worried.  
 

 _iii. never thought i’d feel brand new_

   
The search had been fruitful, but she had not expected to be split into pieces. As though she had shattered. As though she was cleaning shards of herself off the floor. As though more of her disintegrated with each breath.  
   
In that moment, she had to be the gatekeeper of safety. She pretended she knew what she was doing while mustering strength to hoist herself out of the elevator.  
   
_Come on Milkshake,_ she pleaded, _we're going to do this together._  
   
She fell down the rabbit hole: Casey’s hand up her skirt, teasing—tending the garden inside of her.  
   
_Thwack!_  
   
She hit the ground, or maybe the ground hit her. She curled up. Cheshire Cat. She was no longer skin and bones and skin and bones—just flesh. One. Regressed to crescent. This shape she knew. As if dragging her knees into herself could undo everything. Maybe she and Milkshake could start fresh.  
   
She was still falling, Maura's voice in the distance:  
_You did good Jane, real good._  
   
She felt the words as a warm whisper on her jaw, easing her hurt. Maura's fingers on her palm. _You did good, Jane._ Maura's hands in her hair. _Real good._ Maura's face between her legs. _Real good, Jane._  
   
Cheshire Cat, Cheshire Cat. Maybe she would land on her feet after all?  
   
Her eyes fluttered open. Maura was holding her hand, but she felt empty.  
   
The fear of losing had once again become the reality of lost.  
 

_iv. from the first time that i saw you, honey_  


   
Even with everyone visiting, the hospital was lonely. She kept having fever dreams about being pregnant, birth, realizing there was a thing she could care for outside of her work.  
   
Her mother confessed: I too have lived this life.  
   
Even with this admission, she didn’t feel any less sad.  
   
She kept talking to it like it was there.  
   
_I screwed up Milkshake, I really screwed up. I wanted to meet you so bad…_  
   
Her eyes would flutter open, then close again. She would float down the hallway because the ground kept crumbling beneath her. As if she were above this destruction and not its cause. She felt arms reach up from that void and pull her down to drown in it.  
   
In the hollow of early morning, she was round—and Maura held her from behind. She leaned into Maura, resting her head on the doctor’s neck. Maura drew figure eights around her iliac crest, voice ethereal: _deep breaths, deep breaths._  
   
They fell into a comfortable rhythm, almost meditative. She was content in Maura’s arms, like the pieces had fallen exactly where they needed to. _Push down, Jane._ She shook her head. Before she could protest, a sharp ache billowed through her. _Down. There you go, nice job. Keep going. Only a few more._ She hurt—how she _hurt_. Her moans echoed through the small room where she and Maura sat, reclined.  
   
The pain continued to surge. _Deep breaths, deep breaths._ The ground beneath became unsteady, but Maura remained fixed. It cracked below them. She could feel the void slithering through, wrapping it's spindly limbs around—suffocating her. As it pulled under, she reached and reached but couldn't grab hold. As if Maura's hands were a mirage.  
   
_You did good Jane, real good._  
   
_Real good Jane._  
   
Her efforts were fervent. She thrashed through the persistent, rapidly worsening roar inside her, but it was futile. Her trajectory was resolute: down, down, down. She kept calling: _Maura, Maura, Maura!_  
   
It was wasted breath. Maura hadn't even noticed that she'd gone.  
   
She awoke in a cold sweat, slightly contorted. Her stomach was on fire. Sliding out of bed, she put on her slippers for a walk to relax her bruised bones (and heart).  
   
Outside of Tasha's room, she held back tears. Watching the girl sleep was almost too much to handle. The discord within could not be rectified. It lived where the baby used to.  
   
Either way this situation had been handled, she would have lost.  
   
It was then that she had a revelation: work was the worst boyfriend. It made her pay for dinner, it never listened when she had problems with it, and it was so, so needy.  
   
There was one thing she couldn't argue with though, it was always there when she needed it. Because of that, Tasha was alive and still had a future.  
   
But she was still bitter. Tears stung her cheeks. Though this job had just split her in half, she was again one.  
   
Just one.  
 

_v. wanted to be down with you_  


   
Maura offered her a drawer. She wondered if it was a drawer in the Doug and Carol sense, or just another space for her to eventually vacate. She didn’t want to contend with reprimands, no matter how gentle—so she folded her clothes KonMari, just as Maura liked.    
   
Her mother fixed them dinner—though she wasn’t hungry. Angela tried not to take it personally, but it was hopeless. Maura poured everyone glasses of wine, then they sat at the table without a word between them.  
   
The silence wasn’t awkward, but barren. Everyone focused on their own emptinesses. Even Angela had no additions. Finally, she relented:  
   
“I think I’m going to go to bed, girls.”  
   
“Thank you for dinner, Angela.”  
   
“Thanks, Ma.”  
   
Her mother, standing behind them both, squeezed Maura’s shoulder before pulling Her into a hug. Angela pressed her daughter’s head into her stomach, as if to bring her home. It was the only safe space she knew.  It isn’t as though She didn’t understand the gesture, she just found herself repulsed by it. Her mother could do the thing She couldn’t. It felt as though this well intentioned contact was rubbing the last few weeks in Her face.  
   
Angela tried to stifle the awareness of her hug’s reception, but she could find nothing further to say; and decided, for once, to just leave things as they were. The click of Maura’s door behind her was unintentionally punctuated, and the two of them sat.  
   
Maura placed a hand on Hers, and squeezed.  
   
“Are you alright?” The direct eye contact was what killed Her. Maura had this way of reading her appendices; knowing everything about her despite fervent efforts to keep things buried. She wanted to lie, but her body language betrayed the instinct. “You will be. I promise.”  
   
After managing to convince Maura nothing further was needed, She sat at the table alone for an indiscriminate amount of time. Part of her hoped she’d melt into the floorboards, part of her debated eating dinner, but the last part—the biggest part, needed the freeing feel of nightclothes on her body.  
   
The hospital gown was scratchy, so She had her brother fetch boxers and a Red Sox jersey from her apartment.  
She’d thrown them in the laundry once arriving at Maura’s, to hopefully wash all the sadness out of them. As she slid the shorts up each leg, her body tingled. She’d bled all over them the second night after regaining consciousness.  
   
Removing her bra felt the best. It was like everyone’s expectations of how she -should- be reacting hit the floor with it. In Maura’s spare bedroom, alone, she was finally unbound from the week. Though, with shirt against bare breast, She had a realization. Maybe alone wasn’t what she really wanted. Right now, last week, ever.  
   
After tying her hair back, she waited in Maura’s doorway with baited breath. She balled her hands into fists and decided if she was going to go after what she needed, it was now or never. She couldn’t tell if the gentle nudge urging her past her fear and into Maura’s bedroom was the looming sadness waiting for her everywhere else, or the anthropomorphism of the voice she regularly fought to silence. As She tiptoed over to the bed, trying to quiet any creaking, her uncertainty as to why quickly became irrelevant. She pulled the covers back.  
   
It felt as though Maura had been waiting for Her. (She had: holding onto a futile wish this would someday happen, though never under the circumstance.) Maura pulled Her close, and the movement was a source of comfort. With her ear to Maura’s collarbone, She felt their pulses in tandem. Everything overwhelmed Her—she could no longer hold the pinpricks of emotion in the bottom of her eyes.  
   
The flood from Her face felt like a much needed exodus. Each breath deflating her desolation with welcomed resolve.  
   
Maura liked the feeling of warm breath near her heart. Her silk pajama shirt dampened, but she couldn’t have cared less—placing her fingers between loose strands of dark brown hair.  
   
Together they were whole.  
   
Finally one.

  
Just one.


End file.
